Why Endure?
Because endurance sports are a microcosm for life. At some point, when waking up in the cold at the crack of dawn for yet another run, or making your way to the local pool to swim thousands of yards again, or mounting your bike for your hundredth or so mile of the week, you realize that you’re not just training for the upcoming race. You’re training for life.
Whether you’re training for a 10 kilometer race, a half-marathon, a marathon, or an Ironman; the distance is almost irrelevant. The point of an endurance race, of any distance, is to challenge yourself in unconventional ways. That unconventional challenge is different for all of us. The effort for someone to run a 10 kilometer race is similar as for someone else to run a marathon.
Not me. Not now. Not ever.
If you have ever thought ‘not me, not now, not ever,’ about a challenge - do it. That’s the type of unconventional challenge I am referring to. That’s what I mean by ‘enduring.’ That’s what this article is about.
I have learned many lessons in my endurance career. These are them. These are why I endure.
Endurance sports teaches you the value of doing hard things. Life is hard. Regardless of our different backgrounds, we all deal with similar struggles: setbacks, losses, heartbreaks, and trying to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
You will never change the fact that life is hard. So change your perception that it was supposed to be easy. There is a misconception that a life of ease and content brings happiness and fulfillment. It does not.
Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship.
In marathon training we do Yasso 800s named after a famed running coach. Yasso 800s are 800 meter repeats, which is two laps of a standard track. The time in minutes and seconds you run your 800 meter repeats is roughly the time you could run a marathon in hours and minutes. Run a tenth 800 meter in 3 minutes and 10 seconds and chances are you’ll run a 3 hour and 10 minute marathon.
Functional Threshold Power tests are done in Ironman training. It’s done on a bike. You pedal as hard as possible for twenty minutes to test what power wattage you can sustain, where your heart rate peaks, and when you break.
These two tests are grueling. They are done at the start of training and every month thereafter. The purpose is to track your progress. A fascinating thing happens between the first and second test; an enormous gain is made. Yet in the intervening few weeks, your aerobic capacity did not improve nor did your technique. There is only one thing that changed, which led to all the gains:
You gave up thinking it was going to be easy.
You embraced the hardship. You learned that progress requires enduring. You fell to one knee, clenched in pain, breathing heavily convinced you couldn’t go on during your first Yasso 800. But the second time around, just a few weeks later, when that similar feeling emerged, you pushed right past it. That’s what led to all the gains between the two Yasso 800 tests. In that moment, you realized you were capable of so much more than you thought possible. You realized that:
The biggest limiting belief, are our own beliefs.
You jettisoned your limiting belief in your second Yasso 800 test. That's where the gains came from.
The diagram below illustrates your training and race progression. Your months of training are dialed in to peak on race day. But you lose that peak within weeks of crossing the finish line. Yet you see another race on the horizon. But like climbing mountains, you don’t climb from peak to peak. No, you’ve got to go back down the mountain side, wallow in the valley bottom, and ascend the next peak. You’ve got to endure the hardship all over again.
Endurance sports teach us that to make a material improvement, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. You’re going to have to go through the Yasso 800s again, and again. But each successive low is higher than the past. The valleys get shallower. The experience of navigating these peaks and troughs in a training schedule and from race to race give the courage required to go through ‘worse before better.’ The peaks and troughs build resiliency.
The diagram above of race progression is also what relationship and career progression looks like. Ending a relationship gets worse before better. Difficult conversations and heartbreak awaits first, and thereafter you’ll get better. If you want to change careers or get a promotion, you’ll have to work harder, make more sacrifices, be the new guy, take a pay cut. It will definitely get worse before better.
The reality is your life looks like the race progression diagram. Life does not move in an upward linear trajectory. Life is volatile. You deal with setbacks. Endurance sports give you the resiliency to manage life’s setbacks.
Doing hard things teaches us that progress requires enduring and that we’re capable of more than we think. The peaks and troughs we experience doing hard things builds resiliency.
Doing hard things repeatedly equips us to deal with the next hard thing. Your threshold for what is hard keeps elevating and your performance keeps elevating above that threshold. That’s how you improve.
Endurance sports instill discipline.
Without commitment, you’ll never start. Without consistency, you’ll never finish.
Day after day you train. You don’t miss a day. You cannot miss a day. The consequences are too great. You won’t be adequately prepared, you’ll get injured, or you won’t finish the race. Worst of all, you’ll let yourself down.
Countless times the alarm sounds waking me up for the day’s training session. “Urghh…I don’t feel like it,” a voice in my head says. “Maybe I should train this afternoon instead…or give myself the day off.” No. There is no negotiation. I made a commitment, I must follow through. Endurance sports teach you to hold yourself to a high standard.
High standards are a prerequisite for success. To achieve anything truly remarkable you must be excellent. Excellence doesn’t show up on Monday, then take a few days off, and try again to be excellent on Thursday. No.
Excellence is a habit.
And habits don’t take days off.
Endurance sports reward effort. Endurance sports are the ultimate equalizer. It does matter where you grew up, how tall or strong you are, or how old you are. If you put in the effort, you will get results. It’s an input-output process. But the results won’t occur overnight. You learn to be patient.
effort + patience = results
You make incremental improvements, everyday, over a long period of time. When you stack up the effort over all those hours, days, weeks, months and years, that’s how you get results. That’s how you develop mastery.
Mastery is the ultimate wealth. Mastery is something the rich cannot buy, the privileged cannot inherit, the impatient cannot earn, and the thieves cannot steal. Onlookers are always impressed by mastery; by the final outcome. But they fail to see the millions of steps, attempts, setbacks, and failures it took to get there.
I ran the Golden Gate half marathon in San Francisco in 2022 on a whim. I happen to be in town for the weekend. I registered for the race on Saturday afternoon before the Sunday morning start. After the race I joined a group brunch to celebrate. There was a frustrating undertone to the brunch: “who is this guy that parachutes in and runs faster than all of us? That’s not fair. I’ve been training for months. He made it look so effortless.”
That’s not what actually happened. What my fellow diners failed to realize is that a few weeks earlier I had run the Chicago Marathon in 3:18:42 and 7 days prior to that, I ran the London marathon in 3:03:06. In the 6 months leading up to London, I trained incessantly, peaking at 70 running miles a week, in order to set a new personal record running a sub 3-hour marathon. I came painfully close in London. The finish line was in sight only a few hundreds yards away with a couple minutes to spare. Yet I blacked out, collapsed, and struggled to lift myself up and limp across the finish line with the help of another runner.
Although my performance in San Francisco may have looked effortless, the journey to get there was anything but effortless.
Effort distinguishes great from good.
Endurance sports teach you that effort is what distinguishes great from good. That holds true in any field. In the upper echelons of any field, everyone has raw aptitude, ability, and natural gifts. Those are table stakes in that rarefied atmosphere. The differentiating factor is effort; who wants it more.
Endurance sports equip you to face your fears. I have been scared before nearly every race. I was scared before my first marathon, ultra-marathon, and Ironman. “How is my body going to react? Where will my mind go? How hard will this be? Can I handle it? Will I finish?” My thoughts ricochet between these questions.
I was scared before I even got to the starting line. I was intimidated by the workouts. I’d review the daily training session and wonder “You want me to run how fast? How far? Swim how many lengths? Ride at what pace?...that’s nuts. I can’t do that.”
The workouts are meant to be intimidating. An interesting thing happens. All of a sudden you finish an intimidating workout, and then a second.
Things get harder, but you get less intimidated.
The workouts keep getting harder, but you’re no longer intimidated by them. You show up to the pool and tell yourself “this workout is going to be really hard. But I am going to finish it. Just like I finished yesterday’s.” Now you slide into the pool with confidence, instead of anxiousness.
Another interesting thing happens as you build one intimidating workout on another. What started out as an ambitiously insane goal of running your first 10 kilometer race or a sub 3-hour marathon, becomes realistic.
What was insane, becomes realistic.
When you started training the goal was so big and so daunting you couldn’t even think of it. You pay no mind to it and focus on making incremental improvements every day. After some time passes, you lift your head and realize “this goal is no longer insane, it’s still nuts, but it’s not insane.” You continue training not missing a day and determine “wow I’ve come so far. My goal is still a long way out, but I am now closer to my goal than my starting point.” On the eve of race day, after months of training you realize “if everything goes just perfectly on race day, I could just maybe reach my goal.”
During those months of training you overcame your fear. What started out as totally insane is now within reach. What you were scared of a few months ago, is now going to become a reality. That’s a powerful lesson.
Race day finally arrives. Nerves peak. Thousands of runners are in the starting coral of a marathon. Hundreds of thousands of spectators are cheering on. The national anthem is playing. A frantic energy engulfs the runners awaiting the starting gun to go off. And with a bang! Runners take off in a dash. The starting of an Ironman is equally chaotic. Thousands of participants collide into one another as you enter the water. You get kicked in the face trying to swim. Through all the pandemonium and sheer madness you find your focus. You get into your rhythm. You race your race.
Inevitably, at least once during the race, you crash into a wall of pain and hurt. “Arghhh everything hurts. I’ve never felt this kind of physical and mental pain before…all I want to do is stop.” You question everything in life “why am I doing this? I can’t go on. Someone help me, anyone, mom save me!”
You wrestle your mind out of that negativity. Refocus on the road ahead. Think positive thoughts and remind yourself:
You didn’t come this far, just to come this far.’
And you press on and finish.
Endurance sports enable you to overcome your fears. Your body and mind get used to being in incredibly strenuous and demanding situations. Yet you remain calm and collected. You don’t let negative thoughts derail you. You focus and deliver.
Endurance sports teach you the importance of today. How incredible is it that we can walk, run, ride, and swim. That means everyday you can challenge yourself. Everyday you can learn. Everyday you can amaze yourself.
You may not be blessed with that same opportunity tomorrow. So you owe it to your future self, to do it today. Your future self does not want to regret that you didn’t even try.
Regret is the only enemy, and the best time to fight it is today.’
These are the lessons I have learned from endurance sports and why I endure.
I, and millions of others, have learned these lessons through endurance sports. There are other ways to learn these lessons. Perhaps learning a new language or instrument, moving to a foreign country, or starting a business. However, endurance sports are a great teacher for two reasons.
First, the lessons learned are a felt experience. You will feel these lessons in your bones, muscles, mind, and heart. You feel it down to your core. As provocative as I may be, no taught experience is as powerful as a felt experience. Second, is accountability. Race day is happening whether or not you’re ready.
Ultimately, the purpose of endurance sports is to:
Challenge yourself in unconventional ways.
Repeatedly. And go learn your own lessons.
Sam is an adventurer and life long learner. He questions why things are the way they are and occasionally writes about it.
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Why Endure? Why put yourself through the mental anguish and physical stress of competing in endurance sports? This article uses endurance sports as a medium to explore the benefits of challenging yourself in unconventional ways.
